


'post no bills'

by mirokkuma



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Guro, M/M, Trypophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:52:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirokkuma/pseuds/mirokkuma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another day, another trip to the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'post no bills'

**Author's Note:**

> This was originaly for a h/c square, but that was forever ago. If you don't know what trypophobia is, [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia) will tell you. [This](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/shuu_cream/21012977/25320/25320_original.jpg) and [this](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/shuu_cream/21012977/24929/24929_original.jpg) will also illustrate the type mentioned here, but as it's widely viewed as a genuine phobia/repulsion your disgression is advised. (The ~symptoms aren't a real thing. The frog mentioned is. The more you know ☆) The title is from Screenager by Muse and isn't the line I wanted, but the line I wanted is less than subtle, so /sigh.

The drive home from the hospital is a solemn one. Jin’s nails dig into the wheel and he subtly notches the radio up from the paddle he’d had installed for long drives and songs that require a personal touch when it came to the volume.

“I hate this song.” Kame mutters to the view blurring past; Jin quietly says, ‘oh’, and then it’s just the sterile scent on Kame’s skin and they can’t meet each others eyes for one long moment after another.  
Jin’s not sure it should still be so hard to find the right words now these circumstances are familiar, but wherever the line between initial disappointment and running out of hope has been drawn, neither of them noticed.

Kame used to anticipate appointments with specialists so eagerly, so hopefully. Doctors know what they’re doing, doctors from all corners of the world that have learned and specialized in areas of medicine and the human body that Kame had previously been oblivious to. They’ve all looked at him-- not all, not a world’s worth, but it must be hundreds; he’s exhausted as though it’s been hundreds - and now Kame feels more of a specimen than a patient. The boy that loved dares, depreciated ghost stories, that tumbled down a sealed well and escaped with far more than a few broken bones.

“I feel sore.” Kame says eventually, when it’s small talk or wondering if he should just leave himself to science.

“We’ve got ice at home. And I stocked up on dressings the last time.”

“Thanks.” Kame glances at Jin, sees his jaw clenched tight. Jin hadn’t seen the procedure. “I’m ok, though. It’s nothing they haven’t done before.”

“Gotcha.” Briefly Jin’s hand leaves the wheel, his smile doing for Kame’s insides what the big, warm hand covering his own does to take away the touch of latex and surgical steel. Jin’s not bothered by the things other people are — lumps and bumps and things that ooze, and Kame’s got plenty of all three. Scars, and honeycomb pits that turn the strongest of stomachs — turns Kame’s, sometimes. On occasion there’s still a certain fascination with touching, picking, digging as though it’s as simple as an itch or bite, but there’s no satisfaction along with the sting.

“Hey,” Kame smiles, a slow exertion, and leans forward in his seat. It hurts, but Jin’s favourite song is on. Kame’s not overly keen, but he can only understand a bare minimum of the lyrics and when Jin laughs his way through the first few verses he feels so warm; Jin’s voice, light with happiness, flushes the shame from the holes in his skin.

 

Kame limps as they leave the car, Jin's palm against his own and Jin's fingertips dipping into the scarred pits between his knuckles. They'd mostly worked on his hip today, but the pain gnaws deep down into his nerves and he snaps at Jin twice before they've made it indoors.

 

"Ice?"

Jin looms over Kame, tiny and gnarled bundled up on the couch. He's got a basin and a tray of ice cubes, and Kame almost hates him for being so kind.

"No. I don't want it."

"I read in the hospital," Jin ignores him and drops to his knees, "That to soothe a burn you can use ice with aloe vera."

"I don't want it."

Jin winces as he snaps a cube out of the tray. "I think it's like a cactus or something."

Kame watches him roll the ice between his fingers until it sticks less, melts more. Then he gingerly shifts onto his back and lifts his shirt, teeth gritted against the sore press into the couch of the thousand small cavities on his torso. Well, he's never counted, but it damned well feels like a thousand.

"Oh," he hears at his side, and the sound of Jin's knees creaking against the floor. "I didn't think these ones had even started to grow.."

Kame can only bring himself to make a sound of agreement in the back of his throat. He isn't ready to recall the experience yet. Jin is so, so careful in treating him that Kame's glassy eyed focus on the ceiling barely flickers, he barely has to think.

"Is it your shoulder that needed doing soon?" Jin asks softly as he guides the ice, dabbing after it with a tissue pulled from the coffee table behind his back, "The other day they looked like they were getting pretty long."

"No." Kame sharply inhales to the press of ice on a freshly sore and scraped cavity, exhales to Jin's damp finger tenderly circling the raised edge and patting it dry. "Yes," he blinks slowly and his eyes click; Kame remembers the toad he'd been shown film of by a doctor, the craters in it's back as the eggs under it's skin hatched. Disgusting. "Most of them. I can't sleep."

Jin pulls back, turning to set the tray of ice in the basin. He leans back in with his fingers outstretched; Kame instinctively tilts his head as Jin's hand comes to cup his jaw, presenting himself for inspection.

"Oh, sweetheart.." Jin's subtle in combing his fingers through Kame's hair, quietly asks if there's any close to his ear before checking for himself when Kame says no. When Jin first met Kame the pods had been a new addition to his curse — hard little seeds that rattle in every single one of the cluster holes peppering his body and swelling, unreachable, under the surface until matured. Jin had once said the firm, fleshy pods reminded him of almonds once they'd ripened and Kame laughed through the bile.

"I wish they'd just grow," Kame gently rests a hand over Jin's and rubs his cold fingers, "Can you hear them too? In the night. Does the sound keep you awake?"

Jin squeezes Kame's fingers before turning his attention back to the basin of melting ice. "No, you're ok. Did they knock you out at the hospital? At all?"

Kame just groans. His hands are clumsy as he tries to roll his shirt back down, so Jin leaves him to it as he busies himself with clearing away the ice. Kame often comes home irritable and dazed from his appointments when they're invasive. Jin gives a different answer whenever Kame asks the same questions.

Jin can't hear the seeds, nor does he better understand what they are for his years of studying them. The professionals put them under microscopes or drop them with chemicals, but their results have been as inconclusive as Jin's more homely approach. He's tried nurturing them — eased from Kame's body, packed into soil and placed on the sunniest spot of the kitchen windowsill (Jin still speaks to it sometimes, but after four months it seem unlikely his words of encouragement will do much good). Jin dried one or two, baked another, just to see what happened. He kept one in his pocket once, to turn between his fingers when he felt anxious and crowded on trains.

As Kame's tired, dry sobs grow loud enough to reach Jin's ears he quietly leaves the kitchen for the bathroom, both to give Kame some privacy and to collect what he needs for some harvesting (as he likes to call it. Kame refuses to name the procedure). Unlike the medical people, Jin never wears gloves. Jin tried nipping the end off of one of the seeds  with his teeth once, though he's never told Kame. Jin's studied curses and yokai and the location of Kame's accident — infection seems the least of their problems.

The hallway is silent when Jin steps back out. Tomorrow the pain will be tolerable, Kame's temperament will be softer.

"Sooner we get this done the sooner you can clean up and have a nice rest~"

Kame heaves a sigh and presses his face into the back of the couch. He could die. If he died, then he'd be having a nice rest. The hospital could have his body and Jin could give his family the seeds to bury. Nothing would grow in his memory.

 

The streetlight outside their window is flickering to life by the time the bag for their burnable trash is weighed down with bloodied pods. Kame's exhausted and nauseous, his head in Jin's lap and his bare shoulder cold and scathingly sore.

"Almost there, sweetheart." Jin's voice registers over him, just before another searing wave of pain. So slow. It's close to unbearable now. Jin doesn't have the patience of a saint by far, but for this he always has a devoted concentration that seemingly never wears thin. "Really nearly almost there. Two or three more.."

Three more sounds too much. The darkened shapes outlined by the plastic bag at their side only makes him feel sicker.

"The hospital dug them out," Kame mumbles against the denim under his cheek. If he weren't so drained he'd be sick at the memory, over Jin's knees and hard enough to hurt. "Said they'd tested everything but the new growths, they could maybe figure out more that way.. God, Jin, it hurt so much."

Jin pinches at the final pod, squeezes and hesitates as he brushes his free hand through Kame's hair in hope of soothing him. Jin finds the slow, concentrated work calming. Has to, else Kame would be in more pain than he already is and it'd be his fault for being a coward in the face of for better for worse.

"So many injections.." Kame shudders but doesn't elaborate. Unvoiced cries burn and tear up and down his chest and throat but he can't find the strength to cry out as the final hole is emptied, just whines and hisses his anguish into Jin's knee.

There's a rustle of plastic and the distinctive rubbery thud of the pod falling into the others, "You're all done," somewhere over his head, but everything is fuzzy at the edges. The pain is an icy burn that bores down so far Kame feels depthless, as though it's in his bones and deeper still. In a weeks time his back will be in full grotesque bloom, and the rattling beside his ear will start.

 

By the early hours of the morning Kame is near delirious.

Jin has placed a damp washcloth over his forehead and eyes more times than he cares to count tonight; Kame calms for minutes at a time, just long enough for Jin's heart to stop racing between the fits.

This happens, it just happens. Cold sweats right down through the sheets and Kame talking, feverishly through breaths he sucks in between his teeth. Often words come out of his mouth that Jin disregards and forgets the best he can, bundles up with the sweat drenched fabrics and washes away (they're so much easier to deal with once they smell clean and fresh).

Jin's starting to doze off against his will as the time drags on. He's monitoring Kame the best he can — still checking his pulse, still guiding him and raking his hair back as he retches, promising him it'll be over by morning — but he's not even sure if he's convincing himself that this will ever end. Not that that's any way to think about it, not when their relationship is fuller of promise than regret.

"Not much longer, baby. Just a few more hours."

"Hours." Kame moans. All that keeps the cold, harsh, metallic scraping out of his muddled head is the memory of Jin's soothing tongue. Just once, maybe months ago, total desperation. Most of the holes are far too small, but the bigger ones, the biggest ones.. He's always known Jin can do wonders with his tongue, and wetly dipping and digging into his chest was nothing short of heavenly. Never again, though. Jin couldn't rid his mouth of the taste for days, neither Kame of his guilt.

Kame has to claw at Jin to heave his dead weight of a body closer, has to swallow hard until his mouth is empty enough for words. "Jin, you have to listen.. me, ok, it's.. This is important. Listen to me."

"I'm listening, I'm listening."

The room is spinning around Kame as he struggles to sort through the muddle of words in his head to find the ones he needs, anchoring himself to Jin barely helping. Warm, solid Jin, full of life, not full of holes.

"'m a curse on both of us. I want you to leave me. Go, and," Kame dry heaves against Jin's shoulder, feels the freshly clean wounds on his shoulder seep from the pressure.

Jin waits, but as the shuddering subsides Kame's resolve to go through with his plan does, too. Jin bundles Kame up in his arms, working around his rigid, grating body until he's got him settled and safe. They can forget about this tomorrow — Kame will, like he always does. Maybe next time Jin will argue with him again, but it's nearly morning now and Kame's words are gone.

Congested whimpers are all that are left in him. He wants more than anything for Jin to understand them — to understand what he needs to do, that he can never give Jin any better than this. There's a sob building up deep inside, but Jin's lips are against the scars around his mouth before it has a chance to escape.

"Shh," Jin softly shushes him. "No one's perfect."  



End file.
